Eleven – Seven

This was a song that Mr Nikki put on our “wedding playlist.”  I particularly love that line about running for the thrill of it.

A song a day is a bit too lofty a goal for me, but perhaps a song a week?  Or a few songs during the week?  We’ll see.

I married my husband because he sometimes comes up with music I haven’t already heard of – and that is QUITE the accomplishment, let me tell you.  I hadn’t heard Lusine before, but I’m glad that I finally have.

I attended one day of the midwifery conference, in Philadelphia, in April.  I attended a full day “beginning midwifery” session, to help me solidify the direction I wanted to go in.   These are a few notes I took, as well as just some food for thought.

One of the first things they talked about during the portion of the midwifery conference that I attended last week, was how to balance having a family & home life with being a midwife.  I knew that there was a lot of time & sacrifice involved (being on call, getting calls at 3 am by new mothers who would be concerned about every little thing, having to attend labors sometimes for days), but I didn’t realize just how much.  I’d already kinda known that midwifery was not the exact path I wanted to take – not right now, anyway – and this just confirmed it.

The same with being a birth doula.  I would love to, because I want to be in a position to advocate, but to be a birth doula also requires the same kind of time & sacrifice.  The midwife who was speaking said that it’s not so bad if you go into a relationship where you’re already a Midwife, but quite another if you have the husband & kids and THEN go into it.  Really, the women you attend to come first. She actually said the words, “Midwifery equals death to a marriage.”  Eventually – when Nugget is older and I’m older, I would love to be a birth doula.  My own birth doula was so incredibly instrumental in recognizing & supporting me to do what I truly seemed to want – the home birth.  If not for her, I might not have done it.

But I want to help, and I very much want to advocate & educate and try to convince others to go the home birth route.  Or at the very least, a birth center.  So I’ve finally made a solid decision and started taking steps towards it.  I’m going to be a birth educator and postpartum Doula, which will allow me to be supportive in a different way – and I particularly feel I would be a good choice for women far from family & friends and who are having breastfeeding troubles.  I’ve been there, hooo boy.  Many postpartum doulas or LC’s (Lactation Consultants) will push and push and push & refuse to give up on breastfeeding.  But I know that sometimes that can be a strain & cause a lot of extra pressure and make everything that much worse.  So I can support someone in wanting to do that, but I think I would also be able to recognize when they’ve reached the breaking point or need to try something else.  I can offer pumping and … ta da! Goat milk!

The birth education thing is obvious.  That will put me in a position to EDUCATE and to be able to, hopefully, convince some people that home birth is a really good option.  Just to be able to convince one or two people, even, to go for it would be so tremendously fulfilling to me.

I’ve signed up to attend a postpartum Doula class in July.  Before that, I need to fulfill a couple prerequisites if I want to be certified with DONA – simply going through a lactation consultation class, in person or online, and reading a couple of books.

In any case.  I took a few random notes during the session I attended last week.  Such as:

• Detection vs Prevention: Hospitals and OB/GYNs focus on detection, whereas midwives focus on prevention
• pre-eclampsia: preventable with calcium  & aspirin
• Why do you want to be a midwife/doula – “is it a romantic thought or a call on your life?”
• OB/GYNs fear first time mothers and step in with interventions often because they have an “unproven pelvis”.  (And afterwards I wrote “HA HA HA HA HA HA!”)
• When women call up the midwife (who was speaking) and ask if she’d take a first-time mother, her answer is HELL YES.  They are yet unhurt, unscarred, untainted, and haven’t yet been told they can’t do something and are not full of all the fear.  They are fertile ground for the experience.
• Diets – if you gain a good amount of weight, doesn’t matter what you eat.  Ideally, would not be mostly Snickers bars, for example, but if you gain the weight, the baby will be ok.
• Ultrasounds – still an unknown.  Have been shown to produce smaller babies.  Also have been PROVEN to cause cellular change in very, very early stages.
• Rogam – still kind of up in the air.  Need postpartum shot, only?
• Prenatal vitamins – a waste of money?  (Possibility of too much iron, really only need vitamin C?  ** Look into this further)
• http://www.midwifeupdates.com/ – good website, source of info
• WHO also recommends LATE CORD CLAMPING (**This blood is for the baby!)

I also subscribed to Midwifery Today, which is a great resource if this is something you’re interested in.

If this is what Polaroid cameras are going to look like, count me IN. I’d say “old skool” has a chance of a real comeback, what with the popularity of things like Hipstamatic, etc.

Yesterday, we went downtown right before Pike Place was closing.   (The sky was gray, it was very, very windy and it was closing in the hour – the crowds were manageable!  And I hate to say, because *I* was a tourist once, but sometimes I wish Pike Place was a “locals only” kind of place, because I love it, but I don’t love fighting the crowds.)

The day before, we took an impromptu drive out towards Sequiem.  We wound up not leaving until about 4:30p and if you know the lay of the land, that might make you laugh.  Sequiem is about 2 – 2.5 hours away.  So we drove there, got out of the car, looked around, changed Nugget, then drove back.  We’ll have to go again, earlier, so that we can check out the Olympic mountains and the Park and Dungeoness Bay, etc.  (Nugget is a FABULOUS traveler and road trip-per.)

I feel so inspired, whenever we go downtown or on drives.  Words are useless to attempt to describe how much we love it here.  Washington State is so underrated.  And that’s just fine by us.  We’d rather keep it to ourselves.  I’m already chomping at the bit for Fall, it’s going to be fabulous.  AND, even though I know everyone keeps saying that this winter was unusually mild, that’s fine.  I’m down with winter.  While Washington may be farther North than Pennsylvania (where I’m from), it’s right on par with Prague (actually, I think Prague is just a smidgen further North than Seattle) and I know rough winters. The Northeast (Philly) is all about ice storms & harsh winters.  Then there’s Prague.  Let’s talk about the cold fronts that blow in from Siberia and standing out, waiting for the tram, in 20 below wind?  When we first said that we were moving to Seattle, everyone in LA sneered and said, “Oh, enjoy the weather.”  Well, I will, thank you very much.  We are not soft.  Constant sunshine doesn’t please us and we can take the cold.  People from Seattle try to warn us how this past winter was not the norm and I appreciate their worry that “we don’t know what we’re in for,” but, baby, I’ve lived in worse.  Rest assured, we will continue to love it here.  Lately, it’s been raining a lot.  Surprise, surprise.  It goes like this: morning, wake up to sunshine.  Late morning through to early evening (4 or 5 or so), stop raining.  This is when we go for a walk.  And, since it’s not sunny 24/7, we actually feel motivated to take advantage of it.  I feel like DOING things.  I feel joyful & elated when the sun comes out.  I NEVER felt like that in Santa Monica.  I felt complacent & lazy & completely lacking in motivation and unappreciative of anything.

No rain nor sleet nor snow nor bitter cold will change our love of Seattle.  I mean, look, how could you not love it, always & forever?:

In my attempt to update this blog more often, the first in what I hope will be a weekly thing – talking about various iPhone apps & podcasts that I listen to.

Well, I’ve already mentioned the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone and it’s definitely worth another mention. “Digital photography never looked so analog.”  Indeed.  Funny how there’s comfort in the old – though I suppose “retro” has always been considered artsy.  You can find me all over the Hipstamatic Facebook page,  sharing my photos alongside the Norwegians and Americans and Chinese, etc.  (I think it’s awesome that Americans are hugely outnumbered, it seems, when it comes to usage – or at least the showing off of – hipstamatic creations.)  I still have a bent for black and white.  I’ve always had a thing for dark, noirish things – this is no exception.  They’ve recently released SwankoLab which is also cool and let’s you Hipstamatic-ify all your photos NOT taken with Hipsta (or those that were), but I’m still having too much fun with Hipstamatic to remember to try Swanko much.  (I have an ever-growing gallery of all my Hipstamatic creations here and yes, there’s a ton of photos of my son.  He’s cuter than the average kid.  It can’t be helped.

The podcast for this week is “Just Vocabulary.” You might not be able to tell from my blog posts (because I write too fast, most likely) but I love words.  I’m a 50 cent word girl.  Learning new words makes me feel smart, as does listening to this podcast.

As raw milk is something I feel VERY strongly about and I fear losing it completely here in the US, I’m working on a new website & I’d like your help. it’s called “The Faces of Raw Milk”. If you drink raw milk and especially if you give it to your child/infant, as I do, please contact me at : Nikki@eleven-seven.com to share your experience & have it included. It’s time to change public perception and get vocal. We are in danger of losing raw milk altogeter. please spread around and I’d like to have stories from all over the world. Thank you!

Cool Photography of Mars

“Subway Architecture” : And look! My beloved Prague Metro is included (the image in the top right)

Tokyflash Instant Trend Watch

The upgrade to Photoshop CS5 (I’m still on CS3) so that I can play with the “Puppet Warp” tool.

What NOT to expect when you’re expecting, #7: Don’t expect your provider to be interested in evidence:

In What To Expect When You’re Expecting, the author warns readers not to risk being sued by their OB doctor.  Jill, at The Unnecesarean, described this scenario eloquently in a recent blog post.

It’s difficult to imagine a doctor suing a patient simply because she exercises her right to autonomy over her body.  Yet doctors–and unfortunately, midwives too–daily use their medical knowledge to manipulate and intimidate patients into consenting to things they don’t want to do.  Most practitioners know very well how to phrase the “truth”, to slant their words in such a ways as to persuade the patient to give “informed” consent.

What NOT to expect when you’re expecting, #6:Even more testing : This post was particularly interesting for me, because as I started to learn more, and as I drifted away from the UCLA medwives, I started to get really angry about the whole glucose testing thing.  I was angry that I wasn’t more informed at the time of it, as I’d have refused.  Instead, I went along with everything they told me, had a typical “failed” first test and a week of undue stress.

What NOT to expect when you’re expecting, #4: Things that go bump in the night :

As I’ve continued to read through WTEWYE, I have been amazed at the number of things the author has found that pregnant women need to be wary of.  I’ve titled this blog post “Things that go bump in the night” as we take a tongue-in-cheek look at all the things you need to add to your list of worries while you’re pregnant.

A couple of links about the healthcare reform and maternity care, something I’m still trying to sort out and understand: Effects of Health Reform on Maternity Care, Healthcare Reform: How it Passed & What’s Next

There was this, left in the comments of the Unnecesarean Facebook page, which I thought was hysterical and oh so sad.  Oh, yes.  Always the doctors with their, “Thank god you were in the hospital for us to give you this emergency cesarean section which we caused the need for.”

And lastly (for today): Minimizing the Negative Effects of Epidural Anesthesia – The majority of people seem to think that epidurals are no big deal, but when you learn more about them, you come to realize that they are seriously overused and should be used only when absolutely necessary.

Speaking of interventions, I read this quote the other day and it’s well worth sharing & spreading around:

“Natural childbirth allows the hormones that have been working for women for thousands of years to fulfill their functions. This is more important than just helping a woman through labor and delivery. Birth-related hormones also affect well-being much later in life.” ~JANET SCHWEGEL, Adventures in Natural Childbirth